The Last Migration
by Serrafina
Summary: When a pilot dies, they hold a funeral.  After the funeral comes the auction.


Title: The Last Migration  
>Disclaimer: not mine.<br>Summary: When a pilot dies, they hold a funeral. And after the funeral comes the auction.  
>Warnings: canon character death<br>Beta Thanks: A million thanks to pressdbtwnpages, even though I didn't do half the things she told me to do.  
>Author Notes: The title is taken from "Death of the Bird" by Alec Derwent Hope. This story was written for wicked_sassy on the lj community pilots_presents.<p>

* * *

><p>When Lee was five, a bird got into the house. He and his mother spent a good, long while chasing it around and trying to get it out while Zak toddled after them on chubby little two-year-old legs. The bird, in its desperation, mistook a window for the promise of freedom and broke its little bird neck on the glass pane. Zak sobbed and sobbed and clutched at his brother and begged him to fix it.<p>

At five years old, Lee was beginning to grasp what Zak didn't: that some things couldn't be fixed. But Zak was crying and his mother didn't want to touch the dead thing, so Lee picked it up and carried it to the backyard, where his mother dug a little hole for a little bird.

Their mother explained that sometimes things went away and didn't come back. They died, she said, but the boys shouldn't worry, shouldn't cry because the bird was in a better place now.

Two decades later, someone said the same thing to Lee at the wake. He didn't believe it any more the second time around.

* * *

><p>When a pilot dies, they hold a military funeral. Kara knows this. Never mind if he'd only had his wings for a day (the same wings his brother places on the coffin). Never mind if they never should have been his to begin with. Never mind if he never really wanted to be military. And never mind if the shots fired are meant for her.<p>

The sun is bright. The hand that clasps hers is more callused than the one she knows, the one she wants. The sun is bright, and the shots are loud.

* * *

><p>When a pilot dies, they hold a funeral. Before that, they recover what they can of the viper (and the body). If there's anything to recover.<p>

The funeral is organized for the next rotation. They are soldiers in war and they have little time for grief. Lee knows this. He's been through this many times before, for names he barely remembers. Names she never forgets.

Forgot.

* * *

><p>After the funeral, Kara goes back to an empty apartment and closes the door to the room with an empty bed. She sits on the floor, back to the wall, with a cigarette in one hand and a mostly full bottle of ambrosia in the other. Her sidearm is on a table five feet away. She looks at it but doesn't move, just sits and smokes.<p>

She remembers the last time she saw her mother.

A few hours, many cigarettes, and most of the bottle of ambrosia later, she looks out the window and sees, over the low rooftops of Delphi, that the stars have come out.

That night, she unplugs her phone and slides the latch shut on the front door. She can't stand to sleep in the bed they'd shared, so she curls up on the couch instead. In the morning, she starts packing. She doesn't need much. Clothes, kit, cigars. Idols of goddesses that have forsaken her. A triad deck, and a few books – she remembers well the boredom of a battlestar. She would have packed some booze if she hadn't drunk the last of it the night before.

When she's finished, her head is pounding, her throat feels swollen, and she welcomes the physical discomfort as she stares down at a duffel bag containing the remnants of her life.

The next transport's not for hours yet, but she can't bear to spend another minute in her apartment, so she hauls the bag over one shoulder and stumbles wearily up the stairs.

She doesn't look back.

* * *

><p>Lee's watched a lot of coffins be shot out into space. A lot of flags too. Until they ran out of first one, then the other. Wood and cloth became too valuable a commodity for anything other than survival, and this, he supposes, is the opposite of that. Anyway, the coffin would have been empty, so it doesn't mean anything really.<p>

Some priest reads a prayer. Says she's gone to a better place, though not a one of them believes that anymore, if anyone ever did. The Admiral says something. Lee knows he should listen, knows his father deserves that much at least, but the words wash over him as senseless sounds, a language he never knew or one that he's forgotten.

When it's over, he watches President Roslin leave, his father guiding her out. Going to update her whiteboard, he imagines. Minus one. The pilots are all clustered together. One or two glance up at him, but they don't approach and eventually they're gone too.

He stares at the empty space. He's waiting for something, but he doesn't know what.

* * *

><p>Almost six months into her rotation on the Galactica, Kara gets a letter. It was postmarked eight weeks ago and forwarded from her old post at the Academy.<p>

Past the official military correspondence business, she's surprised to see that it's hand-written in a script she doesn't recognize, and that it's addressed to her, to _Kara_. Not _Lieutenant_, not _Thrace_, not _Starbuck_. Kara.

* * *

><p><em>Kara,<em>

_We didn't know each other very long, and I did some things that night that I'm not proud of, but we both loved him. And I know he loved you. He told me all the time. I just want to make sure you know that._

_I know my father offered you a place on the Galactica. I don't know if you've taken it or not, but either way, it'll probably be a long time before we see each other again. But we _will_ see each other again._

_Until then, take care of yourself. And maybe pick up a pen once in awhile to let me know you're still breathing?_

_It was nice to meet you, Kara Thrace._

_Lee_

* * *

><p>After the funeral comes the auction. Lee knows this. As CAG, he's presided over more than a few. Where a pilot's funeral is all sharp angles, stiff salutes, and military precision, the auction is drunk and rowdy and often the real memorial.<p>

Most of them don't have any kin left in the universe. She wasn't most of them though. Her husband came over from whatever godsforsaken ship he's been living on, and took only a handful of items from her locker. Lee knows because he walked into the senior pilots' bunkroom to find the man sitting on her rack, face bowed and shoulders hunched. He'd been clutching her idols, and Lee thought for a second that he was praying.

But the man looked up at the sound of the hatch, and his reddened eyes were enough to make Lee's breath catch. Neither of them said a word. Then Sam stood up and walked away.

Now, Lee's standing in that same spot, staring at the rack, sheets still looking like she'd just rolled out of them. After the funeral comes the auction. He knows this. This is his job.

He forces himself to step forward and open the locker. Her dress greys and duty blues are hanging from hooks, but her fatigues are a crumpled mess at the bottom. There's an empty hook where her flight suit should be. It's absence makes him gasp and gag. He releases the metal door of the locker as though it's on fire and slumps down onto her rack.

He squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn't have to look at the evidence, but that doesn't help because then he just sees the explosion against the back of his eyelids, over and over and over again, an endless frakking loop.

* * *

><p>She picks up a pen to write a reply half a dozen times, but Kara Thrace – who's never before been speechless – finds the words just won't come. Anyway, she's never been one for letters.<p>

So she doesn't do as he asked—doesn't let him know she's still breathing—but she keeps the note pressed between the well-worn pages of her Scriptures. The worlds end, and the letter remains. She doesn't take it out and look at it, doesn't even think about it most of the time, but she always knows it's there. Until eventually, in orbit around the cold, dismal future that is New Caprica, it is boxed away in the fleet storage, traded in for civvies and jackets and matches.

There are some clothes, though not very many. Uniforms, those go back to the quartermaster. The others—a black shirt, black tank, black pants, black shoes—are for the auction. An old deck of triad cards that's so frayed as to be practically unusable, except that everything is frayed these days, so he knows someone will use it anyway. A stuffed…something. Gods, is that a hedgehog? There's a music chip in a hard plastic case (_Dreilide Thrace: Live at the Helice Opera House_) but no player, and he thinks about what it means to have something but not really.

When he opens the cigar box that's long been empty of cigars, he thinks this is the worst, this is the hardest. They're her photographs. Most of the people in them are dead. Some faces he doesn't know, but from the uniforms must have been friends from the Academy. He recognizes Helo in a few pictures, one of her and Karl in a bar, him smiling and her mid-laughter, leaning into his shoulder. There's one of her, fresh-faced, full of youth and excitement, showing off her wings. And one of her in his brother's arms, the edge jagged where she'd torn away his half, and he thinks, again, _most of these people are dead_.

He puts the cigar box aside. There's nothing in there for the auction block, but he doesn't know what to do with it. Maybe he'll give it to Helo. After all, he's the one she'd decided was worth commemorating in pictorial form.

On the top shelf of her locker, behind the box and the triad deck and the hedgehog, there's a stack of books. He flips through them. One dog-eared mystery, two thrillers that he remembers used to be Chatterbox's and will soon, through the magic of the auction, belong to someone else. Two volumes of poetry (one Kataris, one Laurent). When he glances through the pages, he sees she's underlined some lines, though he can't say why. He sets down the poetry and picks up the last book in the pile, her volume of Scriptures.

When he thumbs it open, a loose sheet of paper falls out. The ink is faded, but Lee remembers the words as though he'd written them only yesterday.

_…it'll probably be a long time before we see each other again._

He never knew she'd read it, let alone kept it all these years. He has to sit down, but as soon as he sits on her rack, he feels her presence. His head drops. It's not a conscious thing, more like he doesn't have the strength to hold himself up anymore, and then his hands, still holding the letter, are over his face, and he closes his eyes because he doesn't want to see the words, doesn't want to see them ever again.

He's glad he dogged the hatch. It wouldn't do for one of his pilots to walk in on the CAG losing his mind.

* * *

><p>It's almost a year after Zak's death that Kara finally writes back. The pilots are celebrating Stingray's 1000th landing, and someone actually breaks out a bottle of red wine. It isn't particularly good wine, but any wine is about five steps above the swill that passes for liquor on a battlestar (except for in the XO's cabin that is, but not even Kara has managed to break in to Tigh's quarters yet).<p>

They're drunk and drinking wine and toasting Stingray and suddenly the guilt (and the looming anniversary) is too much for Kara, and she bolts. There are a few outcries when she leaves – mostly pilots wanting her to stick around for strip triad – but everybody knows better than to argue with Starbuck, or worse, follow her.

When she gets to the bunkroom, she's alone, which suits her just fine. She sits on her rack and stares at the letter. Finally, she picks up a pen.

* * *

><p><em>Hey Lee,<em>

_How you been? Still shining your shoes every morning and sucking at pyramid? Word is you're up for a promotion. Don't let all the saluting go to your head, Apollo. And I know flowers will bloom in Hades before you ever show your face on the G, but don't be a stranger, okay?_

_See you around,_

_Kara_

* * *

><p>After who knows how long, Lee puts the letter in his pocket, stands up, and goes back to the now empty locker. He runs one hand across the shelf, checking to see if there's anything he's missed, but he comes away with nothing but a bit of dust.<p>

It's finished.

* * *

><p>She's still staring at what she's written when, some time later, the hatch opens and in stumbles one, two, three drunk pilots. Helo grins his big, stupid grin when he sees her and staggers over.<p>

"Starbuck, whatcha got there?"

"Nothing," she mutters. Then she crumples the paper in her hand and tosses it into a dark recess of her bunk.

* * *

><p>Lee makes it through the auction, and the days that follow. He even puts her picture on the wall. But he can't stop thinking about the letter she kept all these years. It's etched into his memory—every line, every mark, every dot over every damn <em>i<em>.

After Zak and after the war, he thought he knew loss. He thought he knew pain and all the cruel, insidious forms it could take, but this is a new one. He lives and breathes in the shell of routine, of duty, of the things he knows he should do and the person he thinks he should be. The night before the trial, he dreams about his mother's old house on Caprica, about the backyard and a little bird he'd carried in his hands. Zak's hand twists his shirt up in one tiny fist. He kneels down to place the bird in its resting place, but wakes up before ever reaching solid ground.

* * *

><p>"It's really me," she says, and that's all he needs to start breathing again.<p>

_fin_


End file.
